Movie review: Jeff, Who Lives at Home (yes, I know it's not in this year's season)

Jeff, Who Lives at Home captures the individual lives of family members who are coincidentally reconnected at the end. The story itself is less-than-realistic, yet the technique of documentary-style photography and camera movement makes a semi-crazy story more believable. The subgenre that this would fit into is called mumblecore, but I’m too lazy to explain what that is. Overall I found this movie charming, multi-leveled, and satisfying.

The premise is found in the title. Jeff (Jason Segal) is thirty and living in his mother’s basement. His character is introduced with him sitting on the toilet, speaking into a self-recorder about how much he’s fascinated by the movie Signs. He loves signs, and really believes that the universe is perfectly interwoven with supremely complex threads that make up the meaning in each person’s life: in other words, everything really does happen for a reason in Jeff’s world. His mother, Sharon (Susan Sarandon), just wishes that Jeff would get off the couch and do something useful with his life, like, say, helping out around the house for a start. Pat (Ed Helms), who is Jeff’s brother, is somewhat of a careless alpha male, working at a paint company, who doesn’t listen to his wife, Linda (Judy Greer).

The smartest thing about this movie was its honesty combined with crazy circumstantial hilarity. The characters are often found in rather unusual situations—riding on the back of candy vans, sitting in hotel room tubs, playing b-ball with random guys and smoking weed, and receiving strange, secret-admirer messages—yet they handle it with complete honesty. This is mostly because of the admirable performances of the cast, though I have to say that Ed Helms’s pathos resembled very closely his role Andy from The Office, especially the big-time-jerk Andy that we get to know in seasons 8 and 9.  The performance that stole the show was, of course, Susan Sarandon’s. Her moments of (later than)mid-life crisis are handled very gracefully: there was no detectable indication or affectation, yet her thought processes were crystal clear. Judy Greer, whom I recognized from her role as Kitty in Arrested Development, pleasantly surprised me as well, handling her role with a lot more emotional consistency that I would have expected from an actor who has appeared sporadically on television. Though, it seemed she lacked depth in some moments, especially where the urgency of her character’s failing marriage was concerned. Jason Segal was just great, as far as I’m concerned.

The film was shot in a not-so-high resolution, giving it a gritty cinéma vérité feel, similar to an artsy documentary. In fact, the musical score underneath was very much like a quirky soundtrack to an art film. Normally I don’t fall for gimmicks like this very easily, but for some reason I did this time—mainly because the hyper-realistic photography and whatnot balanced out an otherwise hypo-realistic script. The writing is strong, but only because the directors (Jay & Mark Duplass) make it work. The use of deus ex machina—though somewhat overused for my taste as it’s one of my least favorite literary devices— was really the point of the script. Though Jeff’s theory about the universe sending him signs seems hokey to most people, his theory is bizarrely proven true through small yet significant signs that put him (and his family) in coincidental situations, therefore furthering the action.  

My main complaint with this film is that it seems to have a genre-identity crisis, a crisis that often dissatisfies audiences and (therefore) box offices. (For reference of other films that have had a similar plight, see Rango, basically most of the Pirates of the Carribbean sequels, and Lone Ranger.) This disparity between what audiences expect and what they get is what creates problems, understandably so. If I just want to be entertained, not necessarily enlightened or scared, then I will watch Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. If I feel like watching something with a little more depth and meaning, I’ll watch Capote. But when I get a Bill & Ted that suddenly transforms into something way unexpected (a la The Village), it's hard to handle and sometimes alienates the viewer. Jeff, Who Lives at Home promises to be a fun comedy about a bunch of goofy yet believable characters, yet it goes through some strange spiritual journey toward the end, when (*eye roll* get ready for it) Jeff finds a car that has fallen off of the bridge and decides to rescue whoever was trapped in the sinking car. While I’m cool with serious crises in comedies, it really changed the film’s purpose in a split-second. The crisis ended up involving Pat diving in after he sees that Jeff hasn’t surfaced; they both live and the near-death experience brings the family closer than ever before. Even though I thought this was a cheap device that the writers threw in to resolve their own crisis of writer’s block, it was still enjoyable to see the results, at least: Linda and Pat reattempt to jump-start their marriage, and Sharon sees the good in her sons, whom she practically despised not one hour before.

Despite a few hitches in the writing and other small, subjective errors, this flick is worth watching. It’s got a lot of great moments of catharsis and truth that come out, causing me the viewer to ask myself, How often do I just wait to fix things in my life until there’s a crisis that prompts me to do so? How often must I take my relationships for granted until I’ve depleted them? It’s a very fun film, and if you can stand the abrupt change in tone toward the latter third, you’ll find it very rewarding.